02182019 Monday — Chasing the market

18 Feb 02182019 Monday — Chasing the market

02182019 Mon­day — Chas­ing the market

Ter­mi­nol­o­gy (par­tial­ly made up by yours truly)

• PA = Price Action
• BO = Break Out
• BD = Break Down
• CAR = Con­firm As Resistance
• CAS = Con­firm As Support
• UKC = Upper Kelt­ner Channel
• LKC = Low­er Kelt­ner Channel
• TV = Tick Volume
• WPP = Week­ly Piv­ot Point
• DPP = Dai­ly Piv­ot Point
• DR = Dai­ly Resis­tance (piv­ot)
• DS = Dai­ly Sup­port (piv­ot)
• WR = Week­ly Resis­tance (piv­ot)
• WS = Week­ly Sup­port (piv­ot)
• HL = High­er Low
• HH = High­er High
• LH = Low­er High
• LL = Low­er Low
• SD = Stan­dard Deviation
• VWAP = Vol­ume Weight­ed Aver­age Price
• AS = Asian Session
• LS = Lon­don Ses­sion (EU)
• NY = New York Ses­sion (US)
• R/R = Risk to Reward
• M2M = Move to Move
• T2H = Trade to Hold
• DT = DownTrend
• UT = UpTrend
• LTF = Low­er Time Frame
• TTF = Trad­ing Time Frame
• HTF = High­er Time Frame
• Hypo = HYPOthetical

Per­son­al Checklist

5 pos­i­tive 1 negative	Sat	Sun	Mon
-	2/16	2/17	2/18
Beers night before	0	0	4
Time bed yesterday	-	-	1:07
woke up	-	-	8:25
Hours sleep	-	-	7:18
Awake	-	-	1:11
REM	-	-	0:35
Light	-	-	4:33
Deep	-	-	0:59
Sleep well?	2	3	3
Mela­tonin	0	1x	1x
Neg­a­tive thoughts?	1	1	1
Exer­cise yester(to)day	4	4	4
Grat­i­tude	5	5	5
Joy	5	5	5
Anger	1	1	1
Fear	1	1	1
Focus	2	3	3
Cof­fees today	1TC	1TC	1TC
Inter­mit­tent fasting	no	no	yes
Water L	3	3	3
Vit­a­mins	no	no	no
Cig­a­rettes	5	0	0

Health review (for the past week)

• Week­ly goal
  • I will do a 12-min work­out in the mornings
    • Done
• How do you feel?
  • I feel OK just not my sharpest. 
• How would you rate it (1–5)?
  • 3

The Big Pic­ture (dai­ly)

• What hap­pened yes­ter­day? Where are the tech­ni­cal levels?
  • Last Fri­day we held the LIS as sup­port and start­ed a UT break­ing out from excess and prev high inton new highs dur­ing NY

Intra­day Fundamentals

• API report
  • Wednes­day, Feb 20th
• EIA report
  • Thurs­day, Feb 21st

Intra­day Tech­ni­cal Analysis

• HTF
  • Define con­text
    • Where were the overnight highs and lows?
      • High 56.235
      • Low 54.619
    • Where is the LIS?
      • 54.96 area
    • What didn’t hap­pen? Where do you think it should go?
      • We broke to new highs and we might be due for a HTF PB
    • Where’s the best R/R? Opportunities?
      • Prev high hold as resis­tance and PB down to excess area
• TTF
  • Dialling in on opportunities
    • Where are the areas of estab­lished “val­ue” and “excess”?
      • Excess 55.70 area
      • Val­ue 54.75 area 
    • Is there a shift in value/excess migra­tion? What is the cur­rent mar­ket con­di­tion? Are we trend­ing, balancing/range bound? Where are we in the trend range axis?
      • Mar­ket is trend­ing and might be due for a PB
    • What trade loca­tions among this struc­ture would l like to get involved in that will offer me the best R/R opportunities?
      • Prev high hold to short into excess area
      • Long around excess area to prev high area
• LTF
  • What has the Asian Ses­sion printed?
    • AS has been rang­ing with one spike to 56.50 but got pushed back down again. Range is between .10 and .50

Trade Idea

• Hypo 1 Short
  • BD from prev high into excess area
    • Entry around 55.95
    • PT around 55.75
    • Stretched PT 55.30
• Hypo 2 Long
  • Hold Excess area as sup­port into prev. High to set­up a poten­tial BO lat­er on the day
    • Entry around 55.75 excess area 
    • PT prev high 56.20 area
    • Stretched PT 57.20
• Hypo 3 Short
  • BD from excess area into LIS 
    • Entry around 55.60
    • PT 55
    • Stretched PT around 54.75

My goals for the day (Dai­ly Report Card)

• Define win­ning
  • Per­form well by EXECUTING play­book setups and be hap­py by doing what I love and under­stand­ing that I give myself over to the ran­dom­ness of the market

Read­ing the Tape

• What is print­ing? Look for PA with high­er TV and S/R levels.
  • Stalk­ing a pos­si­ble long accord­ing to HYPO2
    • We might overex­tend dur­ing the open­ing dri­ve to the TTF VWAP/UKC/Prev high or we might BD from there in which case HYPO3 will be in play
      • Seems we have hit Val­ue high and bulls are get­ting in but not con­vinc­ing­ly yet
  • PA got pushed down hard and I went short
  • T1 32 tick loss
  • 4:35: we seem to be want­i­ng to BO from prev high after we had a PB to TTF VWAP/UKC/Prev High

Trade Man­age­ment

Explain what trade you put on (include price, SL, TP) and what your thoughts are dur­ing the trade

• T1
  • Why? What do I see?
    • TTF
      • Where are we as opposed to the val­ue, excess and LIS areas? What tech­ni­cal lev­el are we at?
        • We had 2 doji can­dles on TTF and looked to be drop­ping and I want­ed to get in early
    • LTF
      • Is LTF confirming?
        • On the open we moved down and the next can­dle failed to move back up. Actu­al­ly it pushed back up to VWAP and then dropped and almost closed at its bot­tom giv­ing me a bear­ish outlook
      • What risk am I going to put on?
        • 30% of intra­day loss
      • Entry: 56.357
  • SL
    • 56.542
  • TP
    • 56.122
  • Trade Man­age­ment
    • After we pulled back to VWAP I added to my position
      • Entry 56.415
      • SL 56.544
      • TP 56.125
    • Both got stopped out at 56.546 at a 32 tick loss

Trade Review

• P/L for the day
  • Lost 1.92% of account size, 96.17% of intra­day loss

Dai­ly Report Card

Date:	2/18/2019	Week­ly Goal	Exe­cute play­book trades
PNL (%)	-1.92%
Com­bined Score	45
Process Report Card (10 each)	Per­for­mance Report Card (10 each)
8	Pre-mar­ket routines	8	Hypos
3	Ses­sion PECS	2	Real-time analy­sis
5	Trad­ing the process	2	Trade selec­tion
9	Dai­ly review	2	Trade Exe­cu­tion & Mgmt.
5	Progress toward Week­ly goal	1	Risk Adjust­ed Returns
30	Total	15

• Week­ly Goal
  • Per­form well by EXECUTING play­book setups and be hap­py by doing what I love and under­stand­ing that I give myself over to the ran­dom­ness of the market
• Review
  • I lost 96.17% of my intra­day loss which is 1.92% of my total account
    • Now let’s talk about how I lost this. Main prob­lem was I was chas­ing the mar­ket and I know why I was chas­ing the mar­ket. I didn’t stick to my plan. I was stalk­ing a long and for some rea­son I took a short when we got below a tech­ni­cal lev­el. On the open­ing dri­ve PA dropped on the LTF and TTF was show­ing 2 doji can­dles after a ral­ly so I short­ed. PA went against me and think­ing the con­text was still valid I kept a wide SL and this got tak­en out. On top of that I added to my posi­tion when I thought there was a PB, adding to my risk and thus los­ing more when they both got stopped out. 
    • Then PA looked to con­tin­ue the ral­ly so I went long, not tak­ing into account that I was enter­ing at a very low R/R area and this also went against me and I got stopped out. Then I con­tin­ued to chase the mar­ket by pock­et­ing some scalp trades which I know is a red flag for me. 
    • The under­ly­ing issue of today’s mis­takes is very sim­ple. I was not men­tal­ly sharp to fol­low my plan and thus I chased the mar­ket and over­trad­ed. One good thing was that I stayed with­in my intra­day-loss limit. 
    • So how will I improve on this so to decrease the like­li­hood I’ll repeat this same mistake? 
      • I can’t expect to come into the mar­ket half-assed after not rest­ing enough on the week­end. Thus, sur­prise sur­prise, I need to get my week­ends under the con­trol. I believe that this in and of itself will help me lev­el up as a trad­er and I will need to make adjust­ments. To give myself a fair shot I will only focus on trad­ing for the next month. On week­ends I know I can work more on trad­ing, doing more back­test­ing, review­ing trades, review­ing play­book setups. Hell, with incor­po­rat­ing a new approach like mar­ket pro­file I should go back and redo my play­book setups with this in mind. Got some work to do. To be hon­est I’m not too bummed out about today since I am learn­ing so much more and so much more accel­er­at­ed than I was before. Learn­ing more about trad­ing and even bet­ter, myself. 
      • Addi­tion­al: I have been keep­ing a list of things that set me off so that I know that I am a bit aggra­vat­ed dur­ing the day. Today, a trad­er from the com­mu­ni­ty reached out and gave some good point­ers on inter­mit­tent fast­ing and how it affects the men­tal state  that I will take into con­sid­er­a­tion and include in my prep work. I will be bet­ter tomor­row than I am today.
• How accu­rate was my assess­ment of mar­ket context?
  • HYPO2 60%
    • Yes we did hol prev high as sup­port but there was no con­tin­u­a­tion to the move
• How well did I man­age my phys­i­cal, emo­tion­al and cog­ni­tive states?
  • I failed mis­er­ably as stat­ed above in the review
• What’s one thing you learned today?
  • That I should respect the mar­ket more. Be in the right state of mind and body before even think­ing of engag­ing the mar­ket. The mar­ket is always right. 
• What’s one thing I need to do more often?
  • Focus on improv­ing my prep work and review­ing setups.
• What’s one thing I need to do less often?
  • Trade after mak­ing mis­takes. Only take 4 trades. Any­thing more than that I am scalp­ing and that is not what my setups are for.

Feed­back?

Any ques­tions or feed­back you might have please feel free to leave a com­ment or con­tact me directly.